The Final Curtain

by Priscilla Masters

  ‘Her companion’s rung in to say that our friend is going away for a little holiday.’

  She sat down and switched her screen on. ‘To the funny farm, I hope.’

  ‘She didn’t say so but she did ask if we could possibly go out there before they went.’

  ‘What for?’

  Korpanski shrugged. ‘Search me.’

  ‘Shall we both go?’

  He stood up with little enthusiasm.

  The wind was up and the chilly atmosphere even penetrated the interior of the car as they drove across the moorlands. ‘I’d hate to live out here,’ Korpanski said. ‘It’s so cold and miles from anywhere.’ His eyes scanned the barren landscape. ‘Nothing to look at.’

  ‘I’d love it,’ Joanna responded, her eyes sweeping the panorama, empty apart from a few stray sheep, pale winter grass and drystone walls. ‘It’s so wild and fantastically bleak and lonely. I’d love it,’ she said again. ‘But it does take a particular sort of person to live out here. They need to be private, self-sufficient.’

  Korpanski grinned at her. ‘Like you?’

  She had missed this idle banter. ‘Bugger off, Korpanski,’ she said good-naturedly. ‘Actually, I wasn’t thinking of me but our friend Mrs Weeks. Now she wouldn’t have struck me as someone who fitted the profile of a moorland person. She seems much more of a townie. And her clothes and tastes seem to fit that too.’ She considered for a minute. ‘Plus the fairly obvious and extensive cosmetic surgery.’

  Korpanski was smiling. ‘Doing a psychological profile, Inspector?’

  ‘Bugger off,’ she said again, even milder the second time around. Truth was, she was relieved that her recent married status hadn’t altered their relationship. In a way, she reflected, when Korpanski had asked whether he should in future call her Mrs Levin or stick with Piercy he had been asking that very question. What would change? Well, nothing.

  As she had done on the previous day they stopped at the ridge to look down on Butterfield Farm and Mike echoed her thoughts. ‘For a house that’s on its own it’s not exactly tucked away, is it? It’s easy to overlook from here.’

  She turned to face him. ‘You’re starting to believe her? That there’s some maverick, mad stalker out there?’

  ‘Not necessarily but—’

  ‘But what?’

  Korpanski’s dark eyes scanned the empty panorama. ‘Why stay out here if she’s so rattled?’

  ‘Because she’s stubborn, independent, because she doesn’t want to give in to her feelings?’

  But she too turned to look at the farmhouse which stood in such isolation, trying to hide inside the valley but only succeeding in drawing attention to itself. ‘I don’t know, Mike. Maybe she just wants privacy.’

  Diana Tong was standing in the doorway, watching them as they drove in. And even before they’d parked they could tell her manner had changed subtly from yesterday. She was less haughty and condescending, stepping towards them as they pulled up and greeting them almost like old friends as they climbed out of the car. ‘Inspector, Sergeant. Thank you for coming. Timony and I, well, we think we should do some explaining. Give you some background, you see.’

  It was on the tip of Joanna’s tongue to say that this trip was possibly yet another waste of time but at the same time she was curious. She stayed silent, managing to limit her acerbity to, ‘We’d be grateful if you keep it brief and help with the frequent calls your employer’s been making. If they continue,’ she added darkly, ‘we may even be forced to bring a prosecution against her for wasting police time.’

  Diana Tong’s feathers weren’t even ruffled. ‘Just hear Timony’s story,’ she appealed. ‘I think you’ll find it goes some way towards explaining at least some things,’ she replied coolly, holding the door open to allow them to file in.

  Timony Weeks was sitting on the sofa looking – frankly – terrified, thinner, older and, if her face had been able to display any emotion, Joanna guessed she would have looked distraught. There was a distinct change from yesterday.

  Korpanski said nothing but shot her a swift, puzzled look. It was the look a concerned son might aim towards a parent he has suddenly realized is ageing fast. The watch was lying on Timony’s lap. She was looking down at it with an expression of revulsion, her hands and back angled away as though its touch would taint her.

  ‘I had it buried with him,’ she said, still looking down at it rather than at the police. ‘It was left on his wrist when he was placed in his coffin. I saw it buckled on, the strap fastened. Gerald loved this watch. It was his favourite thing. He asked to be buried with it – on – his – wrist.’ The last few words were spoken in a panicky, hiccupping voice. ‘Someone must have …’

  Joanna shifted on her feet, wanting to point out that Mrs Weeks’ first husband might have loved his watch so much he’d asked to be buried with it strapped around his wrist, but that meant that it was almost certainly not this watch. It was a fairly obvious if tacky trick. Unless she had played it on herself. If she hadn’t it was indeed a nasty prank. But if someone else was involved it meant that the person who planted this watch must have known of her late husband’s wish.

  Responding to her unspoken thought without comment Diana Tong passed across a yellowing newspaper cutting. Joanna read it and passed it to Korpanski, who also read it wordlessly then handed it back to her. The headline screamed: Child Star’s Late-Husband’s Request.

  Underneath it detailed the whole damned lot, that Gerald Portmann, the late husband of ‘child star’ Timony Shore, had asked to have his beloved Rolex Oyster (Perpetual Air-King) to be strapped to his right wrist and buried with him. It went on to describe the clothes he should also be wearing, and underneath that a perfectly tasteless picture of the dead man in his coffin wearing the (also prescribed) dark pinstriped suit, white shirt and tie, the right sleeves of both jacket and shirt pushed up just enough to expose the shining face and dark strap of the watch in question.

  Joanna looked down at the item in Timony’s shaking hand. She and Mike exchanged looks and messages. His head gave an almost imperceptible jerk towards the newspaper. She could interpret his comment only too well. So the whole bloody world knew about it.

  Even so, Joanna tried to put the point over to Timony. ‘You can’t be sure that this is his watch.’

  ‘Oh, but I can. The scratch across the glass.’ Staring ahead of her, as though she was a blind person, Timony’s fingernail followed a line, a scratch on the watch glass which reached from the top of the one to the bottom of the line which represented four. ‘That happened when he had the car accident in which he died,’ she explained. ‘He was wearing it then too.’ Her eyes flicked upwards to meet Joanna’s with a mute appeal to be believed. ‘He always wore it, Inspector. He hardly ever took it off. He just loved it. To him it was the ultimate star status symbol.’ Her fingers stroked it and her face looked far away, pillow-deep in memory. Joanna glanced across at Korpanski and could barely resist rolling her eyes. Korpanski, for his part, gave her an innocently bland smile, as though to say, Well you’re the boss, Boss. And I’m just the lackey. She scowled at him.

  ‘The watch isn’t proof of anything,’ Joanna said calmly. She wanted to take the item from her but even she was a little spooked by the thought of touching a watch which had lain around the wrist of a dead person for …?

  ‘How long ago did your first husband die?’

  ‘Gerald died forty years ago, Inspector,’ she said calmly, ‘in nineteen seventy-two.’

  Joanna’s eyes locked on the item. Common sense told her that this could not be the watch that had been strapped to Gerald Portmann’s dead wrist. But superstition argued with common sense. Common sense won. She slipped on a pair of gloves and reached out for it.

  ‘May I?’

  Timony Weeks handed it over with a tiny shiver of revulsion.

  Joanna looked at it. She’d never really seen what all the fuss was about Rolexes but there was something about the feel of it, the elegance and stark
cleanness of its dial. Then, using her much-mocked magnifying glass, she peered closer. Embedded around the dial was what looked like soil.

  Grave soil?

  And the watch itself was ticking, as though it had an unstoppable, malevolent life of its own. A mechanical heart. Had it ticked away in the grave, Edgar Allan Poe like? For a fraction of a second in the room they were all silent, listening to the quiet but insistent tick of the watch. Joanna passed it to Mike, who’d put a glove on his right hand and stretched it out.

  Joanna looked back at Timony Weeks. ‘Why are you so afraid, Mrs Weeks? What exactly are you afraid of? And if you are that afraid why continue to live out here in this lonely spot?’

  Timony Weeks looked at her with her doll-like, expressionless face. ‘OK, Inspector,’ she said. ‘I’ll answer all your questions as best I can.’ Her voice was quiet, low and husky, but Joanna had the feeling that you could use this voice to create an effect. It could be low and husky, it could also be sexy and strident. Her choice. She continued: ‘First of all, why do I stay out here when I am uncomfortable and being hounded?’ she began.

  Joanna felt on safer ground. This was her beat. ‘Well, it would seem logical, Mrs Weeks, whether these episodes are real or part-imagined, to move into the town.’

  Mrs Weeks seemed impervious to Joanna’s attempt to bring things down to earth and hurry the interview along. But the detective’s displayed impatience did not have the effect of hurrying her through her statement.

  ‘You need to understand about my life,’ she said, and again Joanna felt her temper simmer towards boiling point. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. She and Korpanski had more than enough work to do. The theft of luxury cars in and around Leek was moving towards epidemic proportions. They simply didn’t have the time to listen to a prolonged and drawn-out life history, however eventful that life had been. Child star … And yet, as she glanced across to pick up Korpanski’s take on the situation, Joanna could see from his expression of studied indifference and the gleam in his very dark eyes that, like herself, he felt some curiosity towards this strange woman.

  Whether Timony picked up on this or not she began the story like an episode of Listen With Mother. ‘In nineteen sixty,’ she began, ‘when I was eight years old, I was signed up as a child actress to what would become the biggest …’ she smiled to herself, ‘I suppose these days you’d call it a soap.’ She paused (for maximum effect?) and continued, ‘There weren’t many TV programmes then and it was one of the few series aimed at …’ She paused, and mocked, ‘“the family”. It was called Butterfield Farm. It was a huge hit and ran for twelve years. I was the little Shirley Temple in it. I played Lily Butterfield. I was very small for my age. When I was eight I looked about five. I wore tiny nylon dresses, sometimes dungarees. I sang and I danced and I had a mop of curly red hair.’ She laughed. ‘Not that you could tell it was red. Television then was all in black and white.’

  For the first time they saw her really smile with her porcelain teeth. And although her mouth was surgically stiff and swollen, something of the pretty child peeped out from behind the face that had become a tight mask.

  She continued, ‘The series ran until I was nearly twenty, finally folding in early nineteen seventy-two. I always looked young for my age and the studio managers made sure I stayed even younger. I was on a strict diet and when my breasts began to form they were bandaged up.’ Again she smiled but this time her expression was tinged with cynicism and an element of disgust. She looked as though she expected either Joanna or DS Mike Korpanski to interrupt but neither did. They knew they were in for the full version. They were both thinking the same thing – that they may as well sit this one out and then, perhaps, all would be resolved and the call-outs would stop.

  After scanning them both, Timony went on: ‘These days they’re more likely to put fake boobs in the young stars, I suppose. They seem to want kids to look sexually active from the age of eight.’ She paused, a shadow straining her face. ‘Or even six.’ She rubbed her forehead as though it itched. ‘Anyway, the show brought its rewards. I was earning in excess of a thousand pounds a week, which was riches in the early sixties.’ She smiled, or at least her lips curved upwards. ‘Looking at it nowadays, the storylines would seem a bit bland and derivative of American imports, cattle rustling, a lost lamb, a cow that calved.’ She humphed, ‘With a lot of mooing and groaning. Even a murder. Some poor cowhand was found at the bottom of the well.’ Suddenly she looked vague, her forehead struggling to frown. ‘I think …’ She attempted to retrieve her story with a smile. ‘There were so many episodes – one a week every week for twelve years. Along the way I’ve had five husbands.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘Not all of them very satisfactory. I’d had two by the time I was twenty-one. My first husband was a lot older than me. He was my screen Daddy on Butterfield.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘It almost felt incestuous but Gerald was one of the loves of my life. I adored him. Unfortunately he died in a road accident in the States, on the Santa Monica highway. He’d been working on a film out there. I’d been due to join him.’ Her finger massaged the area between her eyebrows as though searching for a frown line and failing to find it. ‘The movie never happened. I did try the movies later on but I could never settle in the States. Anyway …’

  She waved her hands around, crossed her legs and pulled a frown, then continued. ‘By the time I was eighteen I’d made enough money and Gerald was wealthy anyway. After Butterfield folded – we shot the last few episodes late in nineteen seventy-one – I didn’t really need to earn any more so I had little to do except get married and divorced and make the odd “B” movie. At nineteen I was basically redundant and watched my celebrity fade. A light, first bright, dimming quick.’ Showing a tinge of cynicism she looked straight at Joanna. ‘Let me tell you how it is, Inspector,’ she said, holding up an index finger. ‘This is how it happens. At first newspapers, magazines, interviews, opening supermarkets, meeting royalty, cutting ribbons. They were happy days.’ She spoke quickly. ‘Everyone wanted a little piece of me. And then, poof.’ She exploded her hands. ‘Suddenly, no one did any more.’ She gave a wry smile and looked both bleak and cynical. ‘At twenty I was history. You see, I committed the unforgivable sin, Inspector.’ She turned her head to encompass Korpanski too. ‘Sergeant, I got older. From being the darling of the universe I was thrown out like an old sock with a hole in the toe. You see, no one wanted me to grow up. Ever. My adoring fans couldn’t forgive my ageing. They didn’t want to know the adult me but preserve my memory in aspic as that sweet little girl.’ Again she looked straight at Joanna. ‘The only way to keep a little girl a little girl is for that little girl to never grow up. In other words, to die young. Then she remains the child. For ever Timony Shore or Lily Butterfield. Take your pick. Beautiful, sweet little child.’ The cynicism in her voice was as toxic as mustard gas.

  She paused again, then looked directly at Joanna and then at Mike, as though to satisfy herself that they were listening. ‘You have to understand how big and famous I was. There was hardly any family TV in those days, not a great deal of choice, so practically everyone in the UK was tuned into Butterfield Farm on a Saturday evening.’ She tossed her head. ‘I was mobbed everywhere. It was celebrity culture in the early sixties. It brought its pains and gains.’ Her face twisted. ‘At one point I was threatened – stalked – by a fan who tried to gouge my eyes out as I came out of the studio one evening. I was almost fourteen at the time.’ Her finger touched a tiny scar at the edge of her right eyebrow which Joanna would not have noticed unless she had drawn her attention to it in this abstract way. ‘After Gerald died I married husband number two, Sol Brannigan, who was as tough as they make them.’ Her eyes flickered dangerously at the memory. ‘He liked to treat his women rough but he did protect me.’

  Joanna recalled that it was Sol Brannigan who had liked to taunt her by smoking just outside her window, and who Timony thought could still possibly be playing tricks.

  Timony Weeks lean
ed forward and appeared to address her next statement to DS Mike Korpanski who was now standing up, his head on one side, looking at her as though he was wondering whether to believe her story and also preparing to leave.

  Whether or not Timony Weeks had picked up on the sergeant’s scepticism, she carried on with her story anyway. She was now in full flow. ‘Robert Weeks, husband number three,’ she gave a cheeky smile, ‘was already married, to a friend, when he “fell in love” with me.’ Her mouth twisted. ‘He was a lovely man but after thirteen happy years together he died of cancer.’ She gave a rueful smile. ‘I like to think that it would have lasted if he’d lived.’

  ‘You’ve kept the name Weeks.’

  Timony’s eyes looked shrewd and impressed and then mischievous. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I liked the name. It seemed to go rather well with Timony. Besides … I knew it would annoy Carmen.’ She stopped speaking for a moment, smiling at her private joke before continuing. ‘Adrian McWilliams, number four, was married on the rebound and was a horrible mistake. Violence, alcohol, drugs, gambling – you name it. I was lucky to get rid of him. And then,’ another cheeky smile, ‘my only foreigner, Rolf Van Eelen, number five.’ She snorted. ‘A bit of poetic justice here. He walked out on me with one of my friends, Trixy, the bitch. I made their life hell until I got used to the fact that marriage really wasn’t for me. Then I let them go.’ She almost looked shame-faced now. ‘So you see, Inspector Piercy and Sergeant Korpanski, I’ve made a lot of enemies along the way. And not too many friends.’ She glanced, almost questioningly, at Diana Tong, who was standing behind the piano, leaning forward slightly, as though to catch every word in a net of attention. Joanna followed the glance and wondered. No softness or reassurance was beamed back from the dogsbody.

  Joanna interrupted the reverie. ‘Are you trying to tell me that someone from your distant past is trying to exact revenge on you?’ she demanded. ‘Either an ancient fan who belatedly has decided he or she doesn’t want you to grow up or something to do with your multiple marriages and divorces, the feathers you’ve ruffled?’ The words sounded vaguely silly and quite insulting even as she spoke, as though she was ridiculing the entire idea. And this tone did not escape Timony Weeks. She moved her head slightly so she watched Joanna from the corner of her eye.